The Rest Is History - 386. The Fall of the Aztecs: The City of Gold (Part 3)

Episode Date: November 9, 2023

“Conquer or die! Conquer or die! Conquer or die!” Making a decision that will change the course of history, Hernán Cortés chooses to disobey his orders and head inland in search of the gold-rich empire of the mysterious Montezuma. Ahead lie the mountain passes that will lead him down into the Valley of Mexico, a vast lake shimmering at its heart.  In the middle of the lake lies the island city of Tenochtitlan, a vision of bustling marketplaces and soaring pyramids. But are the Spaniards advancing as conquerors - or are they walking into a trap? And just what is Montezuma planning?  Join Dominic and Tom to explore perhaps the most astonishing encounter in all human history - not just the meeting of two extraordinary characters, but a collision of cultures that will have dark and bloody consequences … *Dominic’s book The Fall of the Aztecs is available now from bookshops across the UK - the perfect Christmas present!* *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in New Zealand and Australia! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.com Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Producer: Theo Young-Smith Executive Producers: Jack Davenport + Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. Once more their captain stepped forward. We all know what lies ahead, he said. Let no man doubt that Jesus Christ, our Lord, is with us and will bring us through to victory. But we are few in number. We must not falter. We must not hope for aid.

We can only trust in the Lord and in our own strength and courage. Cortes studied their faces, burned and blistered by the sun. In their eyes, he could see excitement, determination, uncertainty, dread. He knew exactly how they felt, but he dared not show a flicker of doubt. He raised his voice. Our fate lies in our own hands. So now let us go forward and conquer this land or die in the attempt. Let us conquer or die, up went the chant. Conquer or die, conquer or die, conquer or die. And as the cheers rose once more over the sands, Cortes looked for Malinche, and in her deep, dark eyes, he saw a gleam of triumph.

So there, Dominic, in your new book, Fall of the Aztecs, part of your Adventures in Time series for children, you were pitching in, giving us your take on Malinche's role in Cortés' decision to march on the capital of the Mexica, Tenochtitlan. And this is a thrilling moment, isn't it? I'm all about giving female characters agency, Tom, as you know, in the rest of history generally. Yes, so this is the latest Adventures in Time, available from all good bookshops. And we talked last time about Hernan Cortez's world-shaping decision that instead of going

back after his scouting expedition along the coast of Mexico, he will turn inland towards the capital of this people, the Mexica, as we would call them, the Aztecs. And I think it is absolutely plausible, Tom, that he has relied for advice on his interpreter, translator. Well, who else would he rely upon? I mean, he doesn't have anyone else. She may well now be his lover. She mean, he doesn't have anyone else. She may well now be his lover. She may, of course, be manipulating him. She may be a victim.

We cannot know. But I think there is an element of her having more agency than historians have long believed. So brilliant work on her by Camilla Townsend, a historian we talked about last time. She really plays up Malinche's agency. And that scene that you just described on the beach the beach cortez's speech so i'd kind of cobbled that together from a couple of different sources one of them from bernal diaz a contestador who is our best spanish source on all this of course a lot of what bernal diaz is saying may well be made up this is his memoir so this apparently there's a book-length study by the Mexican historian Juan Mirales examining the reliability or otherwise of Banal Diaz, which is titled Y Banal Mintio and Banal Lied. Yeah. We talked last time about how the Spanish, everything they say is political. So everything they say later about their conquest is designed to protect their own position and to indemnify themselves against prosecution so it has a political meaning but on top of that the spanish are using formulas from the chivalric

romances and the classical texts that they have grown up reading but also they may well not understand what's going on yeah you know they are strangers in a strange land kind of bewildered i will say one thing about bernal dia That speech on the beach, he says, Cortes then adduced many beautiful comparisons from history and mentioned several heroic deeds of the Romans. We answered him that we would follow his orders as the die had been cast and that we with Caesar, when he passed the Rubicon, had now no choice left. Besides which, everything we did was for the glory of God and his majesty, the emperor.

I mean, that's probably just as fictionalized as my own version that you read out. But they are conscious, you described them as cosplaying the Greeks and the Romans, that moment when they turn to go inland, they are conscious they're doing a Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great style. They're hoping that they will go down in history as Caesar and Alexander did before them. What is Cortes hoping for? What does he think is going to happen? He is marching on a city that he knows is fabulously large, fabulously beautiful, fabulously rich, teeming with armed warriors. What does he think he's going to achieve by marching on it? Tom, we don't know. This is the amazing thing. Does he even know himself? I think he thinks this is a hell of a lot better than being a notary in

the middle of nowhere. Yeah. So this is where the chivalric stuff comes in. It's like an adventure from a knightly romance or indeed a Roman expedition. Tom, you might as well ask, what did Alexander hope for when he marched into India? What was the best that was going to happen? At some level, people behave in history, they just take a chance. Okay, but Alexander marching on India, I mean, he's conquered the entire Persian Empire. He knows that he's got the measure of pretty much everyone he's up against. Cortes has no idea what's waiting for him. No, I mean, that's what makes it even more extraordinary than Alexander, I think. That Cortes doesn't speak the language, he doesn't understand the customs,

he doesn't understand the religion. He's unfamiliar with the flora and fauna, the food, everything. He has no concept of what awaits him. So it's kind of where courage fuses into lunacy, fuses into greed, fuses into confidence in Christ, the whole swirls of motives, perhaps. Exactly, exactly. He's also leading, Tom, this very bizarre, disparate band of people, several hundred Spanish conquistadors who are not soldiers,

so it's not an army. They are stonemasons, blacksmiths. They are armed, but a lot of them have not really seen much combat, probably some combat killing Tainos on Hispaniola and Cuba, but those are massacres rather than battles. They have lots of porters, slaves, Taino slaves, some Totonacs who come with them to carry all their stuff, and off they go.

And now, by the way, for listeners who are thinking this is a very long series, as we just said to Theo, our producer, we're actually massively condensing and crunching down the details of these incredibly complicated expeditions. But also, the pace of it is starting to pick up now. Yes. They go inland from the coast.

They go up into the mountains. The temperature changes. It was initially incredibly hot and humid. It starts raining. It becomes quite cold. It becomes a real trudge. They get up there and it's really cold. And a lot of their Taino porters die.

Or they say they die. Having written this book, Tom, it's not so long since we did Alexander the Great. And I'd written an adventure in time about Alexander the Great. And I was struck by how much the Cortez mountain journey accounts resemble those of Alexander. So in other words, the conquistadors are following literary formulas when they tell these stories. So they talk about the Taino porters lay down and died. And I thought, God, that's so similar to all the people in Alexander the Great in Afghanistan. Anyway, their first big interesting meeting, they come down into a valley to a place

called Zautla. And the chief there is called O Olentetle. The Spaniards don't approve of Olentetle at all. They see him very much as a sort of Andrew Tate figure because he has 30 wives, which they regard with disapproval. I have to say there's an element of hypocrisy there, given some of their behavior. Proclivities and behavior, yeah. Yes. He agrees to let them sleep inside. He says, I'll put you all up. I mean, this massive band of people, several hundred people, this mob, basically. And Cortes takes them into the square and they see the places lined with human skulls. So he claims.

So spitted human skulls hanging from beams. Not implausible, we have to say. Totally plausible. Totally plausible because we know the Aztecs had skull racks. And this is not kind of Aztec heartland territory, but it's a place that would pay tribute to the Aztecs. Culturally adjacent. Culturally adjacent, exactly. Cortes is very shocked by this.

He must have heard the name Montezuma, or he must have heard about the emperor. Because he says to Olentetle, are you a vassal of Montezuma, my lord? And Olentetle apparently says to him, all men are vassals of Montezuma, for he rules all the world. And Cortes is like, okay, we're entering the empire. Right. And there is a reminder of the world perspective of the Mexica and the Nahuatl more generally, that for them, the idea that there is a world beyond the seas that bound Mexico is equally incomprehensible. It is. I mean, that's the fascination of it, isn't it? Although they must know that there are people who are not them because we know that they traded with Central Americans. Of course.

But you're right. They never guessed there would be people on the other side of the sea. That is a revelation to them. Absolutely. And so this is what Moctezuma has to deal with, is the question of what lies beyond the sea? How many people are there? How readily can they get over here yes and these are questions that will obviously play a key part in the drama of what is about to happen so cortez continues down the valley and at the end of the valley again i'm simplifying a very complicated kind of lord of the rings style multi-chapter march there's this huge wall i mean it's extraordinary detail very middle earth it's a huge wall that runs across the sort of neck of the valley with a battlement on it and there's a narrow opening that leads into kind of shadow

and he leads his men through this opening and actually what they've done in crossing this wall they've gone into the lands of tlashcala and this is such a massive massive deal because tlashcala is a fascinating place. They speak the same language as the Mexica. So they're Nahuas, originally nomadic people from the north, from maybe Colorado or New Mexico or somewhere. As the Mexica were. Exactly.

They have the same religion, effectively. They have the same customs, but they do not pay tribute to the Mexica. They are their own thing, their own little confederation of four cities, like a Greek city-state or something, the Tlaxcalans. The place of the tortillas, it means. Nice. That's a nice detail. Yeah.

So they're completely enclosed by the Aztec Empire, which is actually a kind of triple alliance of three cities. So they're completely enclosed by the lands of the triple alliance. They don't pay tribute to them. They're stubbornly independent. They hate the Mexica with a passion passion and they fight these regular ritualistic flower wars as they're called we talked about them in our aztec podcast with camilla townsend didn't we

they're a kind of combination of a dance a sporting occasion a religious ritual and a war all in one in which you capture your opponents. They're licensed by the Mexica because they know, I mean, it's certainly their high command know, probably not the mass of the people understand it, that it would be too great a challenge to destroy Tlaxcala. Yes. So they might as well kind of keep them playing this role, this subordinate role. Exactly. So once Cortes and his crowd get into Tlaxcalan territory, they are subject to daily running attacks from the Tlaxcalans. They've sent messengers to them, but the Tlaxcalans just lock them up. They don't know what to make of them at all. constantly attacking Cortes's party. And he and his men end up sort of established on a hill

called Sompach Tepetl, and they are surrounded and they're always being attacked by these kind of roving bands of Tlaxcalans. They're running out of food. Weirdly, they're still getting gifts from Montezuma. Every now and again, an embassy from Montezuma will arrive with gifts and also saying to them, whatever you do, don't go into go into slash carly you'll all be killed these people are absolutely terrible so whether montezuma's men can pass on harassed across slash car and territory we don't know it's such a bizarre element of the story we also do know however that at this point cortez is already behaving very very ruthlessly so he and pedro de alberado his kind of chief lieutenant, are leading missions at night to go out to attack local villages, torture the priests, capture and mutilate the women and

children as a sort of warning to the Tlaxcalans. What will happen to them? Yes. This has been behavior that they developed in Hispaniola and Cuba. Exactly. At one point when they get attacked, this is where they aim the cannon. And because the Tlaxcalans are so packed, the impact is absolutely devastating. And in that particular battle, only one Spaniard died. Yeah. I mean, essentially, Cortes is marketing, isn't he?

He's advertising to the Tlaxcalans, but also to the people beyond, to the Mexica, what he can do. This is his opportunity. Yeah. We have all this firepower. We are very violent. You know, you mess with us at your peril. What the Tlaxcalans are thinking, it's hard to say. I think a lot of historians think that they don't know what to make of Cortes and they're kind of testing him. Yeah. Is he worth allying with or indeed employing?

Yes. Because at the point when the Spanish have run out of food, they're stuck on this hill, they're very miserable. They don't know where they are, what they're doing, and they're surrounded by these sort of hostile attackers. Just as their morale looks like it's going to crack, sort of mid-September this is, so they've been marching for weeks. The Tlaxcalans stop attacking and they send an emissary and they say, oh, let's actually be friends. Why don't you come into the city? We'll give you loads of gifts. This is when they first address Hernan Cortes as Malinche, which he finds very weird. And well, obviously Malinche is a key figure, by the way, in these negotiations. She must be doing all the talking because, I mean, it's not like Cortés is going to be doing it.

And reassuring Cortés that the Tlaxcalans can be trusted and vice versa. Yeah. And the fact here, Tom, I think that thing that you said about her hating the Mexica, hating the Aztecs, that's really crucial because she's probably said to the Tlaxcala, we hate them. We will work for you. We will do whatever you want. So Cortes and his men are received in Tlaxcala in a weirdly jubilant festival atmosphere, given that they've just been fighting each other. There are lots of spectators in the streets. There's great cheering crowds, all this. They stay there for two or three weeks. They're wined and dined. The Tlaxcalans give them all brides. We don't know most of the brides, but we do know that Pedro de Alvarado was given a bride called Dona Luisa, who he took a

great fancy to. And she actually accompanied him in his later, spoiler alert, he lives. So he went on later expeditions, killing loads of people in Guatemala and stuff. She came with him. And they're still buried together in a church in Antigua de Guatemala, I think it is. Anyway, the Tlaxcalans say, we'd like to do a deal with you. And this is an absolutely massive, massive world historical moment, I would say. For Orthodox historians, they see this as the moment that Cortes recruits the Tlaxcalans as allies in his crusade of conquest. But I think,

I agree with what they call the new conquest historiography, that it's actually the other way around. This is the moment that Tlaxcalans recruit the Spaniards as mercenaries. But it can be both, can't it? Exactly. Both have an investment in this. But I think the key thing though, Tom, I think it is both by the way, and I don't think the Spanish really understand what's being asked of them. But I think the key thing is the people with the real power in this exchange are the Tlaxcalans, not the Spanish.

Of course, because they've got vast, vast forces and there aren't that many Spaniards. Yeah. They've got all the troops, they've got all the food. And presumably this must have been part of Melinche's thinking from the beginning. I mean, she must have told Cortes because I don't believe that Cortes would have launched this invasion unless he'd thought there was a serious chance that he could pick up allies. And Malinche would have identified the Tlaxcalans. Yes, I'm sure you're right. As the obvious people. I'm sure you're right. And the other reason that I think it's the Tlaxcalans calling the shots more than the Spanish is what the Spanish do next. Because instead of heading straight to this Nostradamus, they turn south towards the city of Cholula. I was in Cholula actually

earlier this year, Tom. It's a lovely little place. Even then, it was regarded as the most beautiful city in Mexico. It has this great pilgrimage center. It has this great pyramid, bigger than the pyramids in Egypt, which is now covered with earth. So it's an enormous hill, a man-made hill, basically. It's got a church at the top now. Like Silbury Hill in Wiltshire. It's better than Silbury, Tom. I hate to tell you. I doubt it. I doubt it. It was very well known because it had a massive temple of Quetzalcoatl, the feathered serpent, and pilgrims would go there from everywhere. Now, Cholula had recently been an ally of Tlaxcala, but had just changed sides, the Rotas to back Tenochtitlan. And clearly, I think, and modern historians think, that what the Tlaxcans were doing was they were basically unleashing the Spanish

on the Cholulans, but without the Spanish realizing it. So the story that we have in the sources is the Spanish arrive in Cholula and the Cholulans are a bit wary of them, but they're giving them hospitality and food and stuff. And then Malinche comes to Cortes and says, oh, I've heard terrible news from the Tlaxcalans. The Cholulans are actually working for the Aztecs and they're going to attack us at any moment. And Cortes, as he always does, says, well, this is not the Vicarage Tea Party. Let's kill them all. And they do. So the next day, the Spanish gather to leave. The Cholulans gather to see them off. And Cortes turns on them with his Tlaxcalan allies, because he now has this huge army of

Tlaxcanans that are marching along with him. And they sack the city for days. They burn the city. They turn people into slaves. There's a kind of orgy of rape and pillage. Sort of really, really terrible scenes. So again, I don't see any contradiction between the traditional historiography and the more revisionist historiography here because absolutely the Tlaxcalans want the Spanish to do their dirty work for them. They are the cutting edge. This is the Toledo sword that the Tlaxcalans have picked up. At the same time, Cortes has every stake in making as brutal and bloody a statement as he can, doesn't he? I mean, this is a warning to the Mexica. This is what we can do. He's been served up with the perfect opportunity to demonstrate what he and the Spaniards are

capable of. Yeah, I think that's true. I also think, by the way, it's perfectly plausible. The whole story is plausible that Malinche came to him and said, you're going to be attacked and that he was worried. I don't necessarily think he has to be ruthlessly called. I mean, he can be frightened. He can be legitimately frightened and worried.

Of course, of course. But I do think that he has decided that he's going to become a player in what he must be very rapidly realizing is quite a complicated game. And I would guess that he would think, I have no possibility of success unless I establish myself as the most terrifying player on the board game, I would guess. Yeah. I think the really fascinating thing about Cortes is that Cortes, he's one of those characters who the violence, the ruthlessness, it's kind of learned behavior to an extent. He grew up in the Reconquista. He, as a young man, seen the violence in Hispaniola and Cuba, but he doesn't seem to be massively involved in it. What makes him a great opportunist in a very chilling and bloodthirsty way is that it's no holds barred with him.

Well, it's not to justify him, but he has no choice. He's made his decision. He's now a player in this game and he has to play as hard as he possibly can. Yeah. Because otherwise he's tostada. He is tostada, Tom. He would be tostada, but he's not because he carries out this massacre in Cholula. Then he and his men turn and they go towards the ring of mountains that

surrounds the Valley of Mexico. There's a lot of faffing around with different routes and stuff, which will gloss over. They end up going between the two great volcanoes, the White Woman and the Smoking Man, they're called, two great volcanoes that kind of overlook the Valley of Mexico. They go up and when they get up there, they can see down through the clouds, there's pine forests, and then they see this extraordinary site, one of the great centers of world civilization, like Mesopotamia or the River Indus or something. And that is the Valley of Mexico. It looks like a sort of a colossal patchwork of fields and farms surrounded by mountains and villages. One and a half million people.

Yeah, exactly that. On a scale that they've never seen in Europe. And at the center of it, this huge sparkling lake. And at the center of the lake, this island with causeways stretching like a spider's web in every direction to the shores of the lake, floating gardens, hundreds and thousands of canoes, and clearly, as you say, hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people living in the lake and the lake towns and the capital. About 50,000, I think, the population of the city itself is.

I think it's bigger than 50,000. I mean, historians have wildly different estimates. So they go from, that's probably the low point, to maybe 200,000, the biggest. But generally, in the conurbation, the metropolitan area, there must be at least a million people. And the Spanish say, in their accounts, Seville just looked like a village compared with this. So although they're technologically more advanced than the Mexica, the Mexica towns astound them. Absolutely astound them, absolutely astound them. All the way that they're going, they're being given more and more gifts. So they're getting mixed messages.

They're getting gifts on the one hand, but they're also getting messengers who say to them, Montezuma is far too busy to see you. He really thinks you should turn back now and go back to the coast. And the Spanish, they are completely bewildered by this. I think they have no idea how to make sense of the messages they have been given by the Mexica. And I think it's kind of proved a challenge, hasn't it, more generally for historians ever since to make sense of it. And it's much contested. Yeah, because what we don't know is, are the Mexica really trying to deter them from coming? Or are they trying to encourage them? I mean, we will come to this actually actually, Tom. We should discuss this. Yes, we will.

We will. Maybe we should take a break. And the final stage of the Spaniards' journey, the amazing scenes of them crossing the lake, crossing the causeway, getting to see the emperor. I mean, the most unbelievable meeting in world history. Yes. And then what happens next?

Okay, so we'll see you in a few minutes. Bye-bye. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman. And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment. It's your weekly fix of entertainment news, reviews, splash of showbiz gossip. And on our Q&A, we pull back the curtain on entertainment

and we tell you how it all works. We have just launched our Members Club. If you want ad-free listening, bonus episodes and early access to live tickets, head to therestisentertainment.com. to live tickets head to the rest is entertainment.com that's the rest is entertainment.com when we saw it we could scarcely believe our eyes and as we gazed on the enchanted stone castles the soaring pyramids and the fairy tale towers rising from the waters. We thought it was a magical scene from the Book of Mardis, and some of our men wondered if they

were dreaming. So that was Bernal Diaz, whether he was lying or not, but his tone of wonder there, Dominic, is absolutely palpable. And he's describing this spectacular vision of the urban civilization of the Mexica and other peoples around the Great Lake of Mexico. I mean, an astonishing moment in world history. It is. You said, we don't know if he's lying. I think he's undoubtedly telling the truth there. Undoubtedly. He's blown away, isn't he? He is stunned by what he sees and they are all stunned. They are overwhelmed with the beauty of it. I mean, Venice is the only point of comparison that they can think of, but they have a kind of an awareness that they're looking at something so beautiful that it transcends the ability of

Europeans to achieve it. And that is a crucial part of the tragedy that is to come, that they do value the beauty of what they're seeing. They do, absolutely. So they've been through a succession of lake towns that are clearly in a completely different league, either from the Maya settlements that they have seen on the coast, and certainly in a completely different league from what they've seen on Cuba and Hispaniola and Jamaica and the other islands that some of them may have visited.

This is more like, some of Bernal Diaz's comrades say to him, this is like Constantinople. I've been to Constantinople. I served in the army and whatever. I volunteered as a mercenary. I went on an embassy. This is like that. Or Rome. It's like nothing they had expected. And that place that they arrived at, so Iztapalapan, which is now a suburb, all of this area that we're describing, this lake, is now Mexico City. So you can drive through Iztapalapan and it's just kind of- Dusty, yeah. Mexico City slum stroke suburbia.

Because as Bernal goes on to say, today everything that I saw has been torn down and destroyed. Nothing is left standing. And the tragedy of that, Tom, is that the Spanish themselves, who had gone through it in open-jawed am are gardens going down to the lake. And the gardens have ponds and they have channels. And the servants have clearly dug so that their masters and mistresses can sail their canoes down into the lake. And Diaz says of that, everything was so charming, so beautiful, that we could find no words to express our astonishment.

And as I stood there, I thought there was nowhere like it anywhere in the world. But all of this must be serving to just ratchet up the tension as they approach the city that lies at the heart of the Basin of Mexico. Because at the heart of the Basin of Mexico is the lake, and at the heart of the lake is an island. And on the island is the great capital of the Mexica, Tenochtitlan. And at the heart of Tenochtitlan are spectacular pyramids, temples, palaces. And so you have the sense that you are really going towards the heart of this fantastical world that they've entered into. Yeah. And they're advancing quite slowly. So they can see it in the distance, but they go from town to town.

Getting nearer and nearer. Getting nearer and nearer. And there are now crowds. So every day now, they are being visited by emissaries from the capital, including a guy called Kakama, who is the king of Texcoco. Texcoco is the second city of the Triple Alliance. So it's the second big power of the Aztec Empire. And Kakama is Montezuma's nephew.

And he is brought to them in a litter as a sort of kingly figure. Again, he gives them very mixed messages. He addresses Cortes, Malinche again, calls him Malinche. And he says, everything that we have is yours. Our city is your home and all of this stuff. And then he also says, however, the emperor is ill and we don't think you should come any further, which Cortes and the Spaniards just think is weird.

They can't understand the very mixed messages because they can't understand the courtly formulas of elite speech, which is presumably what they are being given. So they've got the emissaries coming the whole time. They have crowds of spectators who are staring at their horses, the dogs, the men with the white faces and the red beards, as they're often described. At various points, some of the conquistadors have to beat back the crowds who are pressing in on them. Whether hostile or curious,

we don't know, and I don't think they know themselves. And finally, they've got to Itz to Balapan on the 7th of November, I think it is, 1519. And the next morning, the 8th of November, which has a case, I think, Tom, for being one of the landmark days in all world history. Most extraordinary days. Well, symbolic of so much that is to come. Imperialism, colonialism, yeah. A kind of pivot around which you could say world history spins. Absolutely, you could. So they set off. And they set off from Iztapalapan. And there's basically a causeway that leads to the city at the center of the lake on the island, about 10 miles.

And as they leave Iztapalapan, there are people staring at them. You can imagine, it's so weird for the Spanish to be trudging along. Some of them are riding their horses. Presumably, Dominic, they're also staring at the Tlaxcalans who are going as well. Yes. So, I mean, that's also part of the dynamic. You know, these bitter enemies are... Are there too.

I mean, it's quite something to allow a whole load of Tlaxcalans into your city. Right, exactly. Which again is, how do we conceptualize that as historians? I don't know. I mean, it's very odd, isn't it? Yeah. If you were to set this in ancient Greece or Rome, what would the equivalent be? You know, a load of aliens marching into ancient Rome with the Carthaginians behind them.

With the Persians. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Very odd. Yeah. So weird. And I don't think I've ever really read any historian who says, well, how are the Mexica dealing with the Tlaxcalans?

I can't think of anyone. Where do they put them up? Where are they going to sleep? Where do they stay? Yes. What are they saying to each other? Exactly. Nobody knows how to conceptualize this. It's like they're in a dream, a weird dream. I mean, the Spanish keep saying that. It's a dream. It's like we're in a novel. But it seems for the Mexica as well, that they cling to ritual, don't they? Yeah. So the Spanish, they turn up at some kind of great formal entry and all the noblemen are there and they keep kind of prostrating themselves, touching the ground. And it takes about an hour. It does. And Cortés gets very impatient with this. He is. Because the Spanish don't know what's going on. They've got one person who understands the language, Melinche, who's muttering in Cortés' ear the whole time. And the rest of the Spanish are bored, tired, frightened, excited, all these things.

Cortés has organized his men in ranks. He's at the front with the senior captains, with the Alvarado brothers. They have the standard with the cross. Then behind them, they've got the infantry, the horsemen, the crossbowmen, and then towards the back at Slashcarlans with all the porters and the slaves and so on and so forth. They cross these bridges. They cross these causeways. As you say, they are met by the nobles at a fort in the middle of the lake on a kind of outcrop. And this is a point where the causeways meet. And then they advance towards the city, towards the main gate. And there, there are ranks and ranks of what are called the Jaguar Knights, elite warriors.

That's a great name, isn't it? Yeah. Brilliant name. I'd love a Jaguar Knights if I were a king. And from their ranks, a litter comes forward. It's been carried by the great dignitaries of the Aztec Empire. And there's a man on it with a massive green feathered headdress. And this, of course, is Motekuzuma Shokoyotsin. Or I would call him Montezuma.

I would call him Moctezuma. Would you? You're so much woker than I am, Tom. Is that woker? I think it's more Spanish. I think it's more Spanish. It's a Spanish pronunciation, isn't it? Yeah.

You're just such a continental. I am. Yes. You're a citizen of nowhere. Let's be honest. Can I read you Camilla Townsend's beautiful description? Do. Over him, his retainers held a magnificent canopy,

a great arc pointing towards the sky, its bits of gold and precious stones glinting in the light. Amazing moment. Amazing moment. I mean, it must have been. We should say something about this bloke on the litter. The image that you get in all the sort of standard sort of popular histories or the kids' books and stuff. Like yours?

Not like mine, Tom. No. So this is why Adventures in Time cut above. Yeah. It's revisionist wokery. That's what my books represent. But in the standard books, the person on the litter is a terrible drip. Yes. Well, he's Boabdil, isn't he? We talked about the Moorish king who surrenders the Alhambra. And you have to wonder whether that perhaps is part of the historiographical influence on how Moctezuma is presented. But Moctezuma, I mean, do you want us to say the Nahuatl name again, his actual name? Moctezuma Shocoyotzin, Tom.

So apparently this means frowns like a lord. Yeah. And he does frown, doesn't he? He's a hard ruler. He's a hard rider. He is a really, really formidable and impressive and terrifying man. He has been the high speaker, the great king of the Mexica, the emperor of this realm for about 17 years. And Dominic, I mean, worth saying that there isn't a kind of, you know,

it's not primogeniture. You have to be held worthy of becoming king. Yeah, absolutely. From admittedly a kind of, you know, quite a small pool of candidates, but he's been chosen as king because people think that he's the best qualified for it. And everything over the course of his 17 year reign suggests that he is indeed a man who is very, very proficient at the art of ruling. He's very good at it. Because as I understand it, he has been supervising the emergence of the Aztec empire as a kind of loose, inchoate order into something that would be more familiar and say to the Europeans, a kind of state. He's been engaged in the process of building the infrastructure of a state. Although all those are kind of very anachronistic ways of describing it, but basically

that's what he's been doing. It is. This is totally different, totally different from the situation when the Spanish arrive in Peru with the Incas, where the Incas are all divided and feuding among themselves. With the Aztecs, with the Mexica, they are united and he is a really, really impressive guy. He has done a good job. He has been utterly formidable. He's expanded their frontiers. He's faced rebellions and he's crushed them mercilessly. He's sent out new officials to gather tribute. He's done all these things. And the version that you often get, and certainly that I was brought up with, which is this quivering weed who can't wait to surrender his kingdom to the Spaniards,

who he thinks are gods. And he's terrified of Cortes, terrified of Charles V, bursts into tears at the sight of a beard. That's just plain wrong. It's utterly implausible. Right. But he's not a coward, but it is also his duty to preserve his people. And so if he feels that he is facing a threat that is maybe beyond his capacity to cope with, then that is also something that has to be factored in. And again, kind of going back to the science fiction analogy, if you're the president in the White House, maybe you can deal with two or three flying saucers. But if there's a whole battle

fleet of flying saucers and they're all armed with terrifying ray guns or whatever, then it's a different matter, isn't it? It is. But does he think at that point there are going to be loads of them? I'm not sure he does. No, he doesn't know. But I think that it is sensible for him to kind of scope it out. Don't you think? And likewise with Cortez. I mean, I think that these are like dogs that are sniffing each other's bottoms. Yes. Right. That's a lovely image. No, I think there's lots of truth in that. I think Montezuma is sort of thinking, let's see what's going on here. This is something that's not happened before. You know, it's not in our histories, which they take very seriously, the Aztecs.

Yeah. It's not in the rule book. Yeah, it's not in the books. This is new. But he is a politician. He's used to negotiating with other city-states. You know, he knows there's a big world out there. He didn't know there were people beyond the sea. But also, Dominic, he also knows that his people are hated, doesn't he? So if the Tlaxcalans are there, he knows that he has to maintain his authority, his power, but equally, he has to be aware that they're camped out on the edge of a volcano.

Well. I mean, literally. Yes, they are. But this is the whole dynamic of Mesoamerican polities, is that empires rise and then they disintegrate because the constituent parts are so ready to kind of jump ship. Yeah. And that's happened many times because the Mexika themselves were the vassals of a people called the tepeneks and there were lots of civilizations before so they do have a very

strong sense don't they camilla tanza makes this point of a cycle of death and rebirth and all this so they don't want to be on the death side of that no montezuma is very friendly to cortez at first i mean in his own way. So they greet each other. Cortez actually goes to embrace him. Cortez goes to give him a hug. I know. So Theo, our producer of course, is a Frenchman. So he just spends the whole time rushing around trying to hug people and give them kisses and it's endlessly embarrassing. Montezuma is much more Anglo-Saxon, isn't he? Very stiff.

He is because Cortez goes to embrace him. And the two guys who are carrying Montezuma is much more Anglo-Saxon, isn't he? Very stiff. He is, because Cortez goes to embrace him. And the two guys who are carrying Montezuma's litter, who are his brother, Kuitlahuek, and his nephew, Kakama, who are these two great people on whom he relies, they kind of warn Cortez off. No, back off, mate. Yeah, stand back, please. But Cortez gives Montezuma a necklace.

Montezuma gives Cortez another necklace of red snail shells with little solid-grawled kind of shrimps. I mean, what they say to each other is incredibly controversial among historians. But clearly, Cortes says, are you him? Are you Montezuma? Malinche is translating all this. Yes, says Montezuma. And then it seems to me anyway that Montezuma says something like this.

He says something like, welcome, my Lord. You must be very weary. You've traveled far, but this is your home now. Your coming has been, well, does he say your coming has been foretold, been prophesied? Or does he say- I've been told you're coming. We were told that you were coming. Yes, because they're very different.

He says, the city, our city, the city of the Mexica is yours now. I will show you to your house where you may rest. Welcome, my lord. And Cortes probably thinks, okay, this is probably more effusive than I was expecting, but fine. So Montezuma leads Cortes into the city through the gates. I mean, you can imagine how utterly overwhelming it must have been because there are people on all the rooftops. There are huge crowds, there are drummers, there's trumpets, there's flutes, there's the whole works. I mean, there's massive capital. They get a glimpse of this central square with huge pyramid temples reaching to the skies and skull racks. Skull racks, exactly. I mean, as a sensory overload. And don't forget,

they've been marching for weeks. I mean, they're knackered and hungry and wet and dirty and all of this. Montezuma takes them to a sort of mansion, which is called the Palace of Axeia Cattle, which is his father's old palace. And he takes them into this dining room where there's two thrones and there are servants waiting with tortillas and turkey and fruit and eggs and all this. And he says, crack on, get stuck in. So they then eat and drink their fill. And then Montezuma returns for this incredibly, incredibly significant moment where he gives a speech to them. If you read Hugh Thomas' book, Conquest, for example, or you read Cortes' letters, or you read Bernal Diaz, they will tell you, this is the moment when Montezuma says to Cortes, you have arrived and it was foretold. I surrender my kingdom to

you. I acknowledge the king of Spain as my overlord. I am his vassal. This is your kingdom now. Well done. You've won. And I don't know about you, Tom, but I find that, like most modern historians, I find that utterly implausible. Yeah. I mean, because it clearly is. So one could advance all kinds of ways of saying how Cortes might have arrived at that. So we talked about the legal requirements. He first pens this story, doesn't he, in a letter to Charles V back in Spain. And he's writing that at a time where everything seems to have gone completely wrong. So, spoiler alert, the Spanish feel that they've been expelled, lots of them have been killed. Moctezuma himself is dead by this point. If Cortes can present to the Spanish king the fact that he is defending the Spanish king's lands, that Moctezuma has given them to the Spanish king, then that makes him seem a heroic defender of the Spanish king's cause, rather than a guy who has gone on a harebrained scheme

in defiance of orders and everything's gone wrong. So that would be one part of it. But presumably also, you talk about the slightly flowery quality of the formal language of Moctezuma in greeting his guests. I mean, essentially, you know, it's mi casa es su casa. Yeah, it's exactly that, isn't it? And again, I mean, you could say that Cortez is willfully misinterpreting that. He fixes on that as something that he can then spin and market, or perhaps he genuinely misunderstands it. Perhaps Malinche is spinning it for him. There are so many cross currents, there's so many opportunities for misinterpretation. And of course, the retrospective effect of memory.

If you desperately need and want to believe something, then your memory can play tricks. I think it's exactly that. I think you're absolutely right. Matthew Restle, he's written a couple of books on this, one on the meeting of Cortes and Montezuma, and one on, I think, Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest, he calls it. And I found reading those books one of the most intellectually exciting historiographical experiences. I agree. I read books one of the most intellectually exciting historiographical experiences. I agree.

I read the one on the meeting between Cortez and Moctezuma maybe a few years ago. It came out in 2018, I think, or 19 or something like that. Something like that, yeah. And it was up there with the excitement of reading Patricia Croner on The Origins of Islam for the first time, or Gregory Pegg on The Cathars. It was kind of one of those books that completely rewires your understanding of a story that you thought that you had always understood. Incredibly thrilling book. Which said, I think he is slightly harsh on Cortes, perhaps.

He hates Cortes. He absolutely despises Cortes. But he makes this point very, very strongly that you alluded to. Cortes needs the Spanish king to believe this story because otherwise he, Cortes, has committed a crime. He has gone against his orders and he's revealed himself to be a greedy so-and-so who's trying to steal somebody else's lands. He needs to tell the Spanish king, no, no, no, they're your lands and I'm trying to recover them for you. So he needs to tell that story king, no, no, no, they're your lands and I'm trying to recover them for you. So he needs to tell that story. But as you say, that doesn't mean that he doesn't necessarily come to believe it himself. And I think it's really important to remember that the Spanish are utterly disorientated when they arrive into Nostradland.

They're surrounded by weird architecture, weird food, everything new, these crazy people in feathers who are speaking a language they don't understand they're knackered they're frightened they are struggling to make sense of everything and when montezuma stands up and is saying this is your home everything i have is yours which are standard kind of narwhal formulas of welcome and hospitality. They grasp after it. And Malinche is translating them. And of course, who knows whether she can be trusted. Spitting it.

Whether she's spinning it. I mean, the truth is, of course, we'll never know how this goes. I think there's one further aspect of the formal language of Moctezuma is that he seems to imply when he speaks publicly before his people that the Spanish are long lost relatives of his forebears. And you can absolutely see why he would be doing that because he doesn't want to convey to his subjects that he has no idea what's going on. I mean, he wants to imply that, yeah, they look strange, but these are part of the world that I understand and claiming some kind of sense of kinship with them. But again, you could see how that would

provide something that the Spanish could then subsequently exploit. Yeah, absolutely. So I think from Montejuma's point of view, he clearly hasn't surrendered his kingdom. I mean, that's obviously mad and nonsensical. He has greeted them in very flowery terms. He's given them all this food and then he basically i think says to them have a good rest now we'll speak in the morning god knows where he's put all the tlachcalans they're probably quartered in corridors stables who knows they've put up the spanish horses the dogs all of that stuff they must have found space for the cannons or their kit you see i think the question of what they've done with the Tlaxcalans, as far as I know,

doesn't get answered. No, no one knows. It's a really obvious gap in the narrative. Because also the Spanish don't want you to notice the Tlaxcalans. No. Because in their own version of the story, they are the heroes who have won this war against overwhelming odds. And if they tell the truth, which is sometimes they

fought battles in which they were less than a tenth of their own army, and they were surrounded by native warriors who were fighting for another cause, their whole enterprise looks somehow less heroic, less glamorous, less exciting. It does. The question of how Moctezuma is treating the Tlaxcalans, who are his people's enemies, I mean, that's a political headache for him. Massive. And as far as I know, we have no idea what he's doing with them at all. So known unknowns, Dominic. I think the best way of making sense of this is actually just to be honest about it and to say, we don't know, and we don't know because they don't know. Because none of them really have any sense what's going on. But also we don't know because it's in the interests of everybody on all sides to cover

up certain things. Yeah. To draw veils over things. And of course, we don't really know what's going on with Moctezuma because as events will show and that we'll get onto in the next episode, things go horribly wrong for him. Yeah. So I think that we should stop episode three at this point. The Spanish are in the heart of Tenochtitlan. They have been put up in one of

the royal palaces. They're in the middle of a vast capital in the heart of a lake, hundreds of miles from the coast, thousands of miles from Spain, surrounded by people who don't speak their language. Terrifying. And the question that they must be asking themselves is, what is their status? Are they guests? Are they prisoners? Who knows? And this is Matthew Restle's brilliant theory, which we'll maybe talk about in the next episode. Are they creatures about to go into a zoo? Yes. What a cliffhanger that is. So the next episode, there will be zoo-related discussion. So I hope you'll enjoy that because the next episode is an absolute banger. When you think this has been a banger, and this has been a banger, Dominic, you've been brilliant.

The next one, even more of a banger. So we will see you when it's scheduled to come out. But of course, if you want to just carry on and listen to it right now, you can do so by joining the Restless History Club. So we will see you very soon. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. I'm Marina Hyde.

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